THE LIMITS OF PLASTIC OPTICAL-FIBER FOR SHORT-DISTANCE HIGH-SPEED COMPUTER-DATA LINKS

The attenuation and dispersion of commercially available all-plastic s tep-index optical fiber are the major factors limiting the maximum ach ievable transmission distance and bit rate; this article explores thes e limits. Calculations predict that approximately 500 Mb/s transmissio n over 100 m of standard 0.47 NA step-index PMMA POF at 650 nm is feas ible, and recent experimental results at up to 400 Mb/s are briefly de scribed. The implications of having a lower loss, higher bandwidth POF , for example, perfluorinated, graded-index PMMA, are discussed.